Using VSCode Interactive With Pyenv Virtualenv

Creating the virtualenv

Create your folder, and initialize the virtual environment with pyenv virtualenv. I will use Python version 3.9.5 and call my environment project-venv:

pyenv virtualenv 3.9.5 project-venv

Activate your virtual environment with

pyenv activate project-venv

Confirm that this is working by checking your Python version with python -V, and you should see 3.9.5.

You can also create a file .python-version at the root of your project with the path to the virtualenv:

3.9.5/envs/project-venv

This file tells pyenv which Python version should be used. It will also allow pyenv to automatically activate the project-venv when you open the project folder in Terminal.

If this does not work, ensure that your .zshrc/.bashrc has the line eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)".

Selecting the interpreter path

In VSCode's settings, set python.pythonPath to the path of the virtualenv project-venv we created in the previous step. In my case, it's ~/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/envs/fit-venv/bin/python (On Mac). To confirm that this is working, see the bottom left of your VSCode, where you should see something similar to Python 3.9.5 64-bit ('venv': venv).

Starting the interactive window

Install ipykernel before running code:

pip install ipykernel

Once installed, create a block:

#%%
print("Hello!")

and run it with shift+enter.

Cleaning up virtualenvs

To list out all versions and virtualenvs with pyenv, run pyenv versions. At the bottom, we should see the virtualenv we created:

...
  system
  ...
  3.9.5/envs/project-venv
  project-venv

To delete project-venv, run pyenv uninstall project-venv and pyenv virtualenv-delete project-venv. If this does not work, open ~/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/envs, and manually delete the virtual environment folder.